


Twilight Saints

by anonymous_sibyl



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Community: fire_fic, Female Protagonist, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-06
Updated: 2007-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:22:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_sibyl/pseuds/anonymous_sibyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're frakked-up and frakked-over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twilight Saints

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marenfic (maren)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maren/gifts).



> Written for [](http://marenfic.livejournal.com/profile)[**marenfic**](http://marenfic.livejournal.com/) who asked for a Kara pairing, in thanks for her generous donation to [](http://community.livejournal.com/fire_fic/profile)[**fire_fic**](http://community.livejournal.com/fire_fic/). Thanks to [](http://annavtree.livejournal.com/profile)[**annavtree**](http://annavtree.livejournal.com/) and [](http://alixnoorchis.livejournal.com/profile)[**alixnoorchis**](http://alixnoorchis.livejournal.com/) for everything. Spoilers for _Razor_.
> 
> This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/). None of the media or characters written about in my fanfiction belong to me and I make no profit from these works.

There are no constants in her world, nothing she can stand on, breathe easy, gain her footing, so she manufactures three and rests on them. She's named them hooch, flight, and the lie.

Hooch is the easiest. She can drink and forget all the stupid little problems and conflicts she has to deal with. Most nights, the only person she hurts with her drinking is herself.

Flight is the best. She's invincible when she's out there in the dark, unbeatable and as close as she can come to immortal. She hurts cylons when she's out there, kills the frakkers dead.

Lee is the lie. She forgets who she is when she's with him, or maybe she remembers who she wanted to be, and either way it doesn't matter because she hurts a fleet's worth of people every time she touches him. That's an unavoidable thing.

There are plenty of unavoidable things in her life. Seems like she runs straight into one every damn time she turns around. It would be funny if things didn't keep going directly to hell. Frak, it's funny anyway.

Everything is funny since she got saddled with this special destiny of hers. Laugh, drink, kill, frak, so you don't cry. Or maybe so you can die, or at least feel like you did, because girls with destinies have to go on and live. Kendra didn't have a destiny, because she got to stop fighting and rest.

"Or maybe her destiny was to die the way she did, blowing up that thing."

Of course Lee would think that. He probably likes the idea of destiny because that would mean nothing is ever his fault. "Or maybe destiny is a load of crap so that we act like good little boys and girls."

"You've never once been a _good little girl_, Kara."

Well, ouch. That would sting if she were sober.

He squats down in the hallway and taps his finger on Kendra's photo, where Kara's taped it low down on the wall where no one is likely to notice it among all the others. Kendra isn't smiling; she's got a list in her hands and she looks like she's yelling at someone out of the frame. She is, actually. She's yelling at Kara. "You frakked her, didn't you?" he asks.

Gods damn it, that's funny. "Is that the kind of thing you want to know?"

"Yes."

Laugh so you don't die. "I really don't think you do." She takes one last look at Kendra's photo and closes her eyes. "Even if I did, it didn't mean anything. It was just…"

"One of those things," he finishes. "You have a lot of those, don't you?"

"Go to hell, Lee."

"I'm sure I will."

"Beat you there," she says with a smirk, and walks away.

 

She never looked for marks on Kendra's neck and Kendra never checked the level in her flask. They never talked except to trade insults and discuss ship's business. If Lee is the lie, then Kendra was the drug, just another thing Kara used to take the edge off.

She should probably feel terrible about that. She doesn't, but other people most likely would.

"Brooding," he says, entering without knocking.

She toasts him with her flask. "Drinking, actually. Join me?"

He shrugs his shoulders and in one smooth move begins to unbutton his jacket. "Why not." The jacket flies by her and thumps the wall before it comes to rest, hanging half off the bunk. "I could use it."

She moves aside to make room for him, giggles tipsily when he sits on the edge of his jacket. "You're a slob."

"I'm tired."

"Rough couple of weeks of sending me to my death, huh?"

"Kara." He says her name like it's enough, like if they connect she'll forgive him or something. As if that's something she needs when it's really something he needs. "That isn't fair."

"Didn't say I blamed you."

His face is as hard as the metal that makes up their ship. "Didn't have to."

"Right. And, anyway, I'm not the one who died."

"Oh." He takes the flask from her hand and nods as he drinks. "I see. You aren't blaming me. You're blaming yourself."

"No, Lee, I'm blaming her." She leans back against the wall, closes her eyes, and blindly reaches for the flask. When it touches her hand she raises it to her lips and doesn't think again until she swallows enough to burn in that way that she knows will make her feel numb soon. "I'm not like you, or like the Admiral. I don't feel all this guilt you're always running from." She sneaks a look at him out of the corner of her eye. He's frowning, she knew he would be.

"I'm not guilty," he says. "I didn't do anything wrong."

"Yeah, but you did something you feel terrible about, and that makes it different, doesn't it?"

He shifts uncomfortably. "I thought we were drinking."

"We are." She hands him the flask. "I frakked her. I frakked her a few times." She smiles, lost in the memories. "It was good, too. Fun. We had a good time."

"She was… nice."

"Oh, gods, Lee, no." She laughs, loudly, and shakes her head at him and the sad expression on his face. "She wasn't nice and she wasn't okay. She was a frakked-up junkie who did some shit things in her life."

"She was a good officer."

"Yeah, she was great at taking orders."

He shifts on the bed and his leg presses into hers. "You're crap at taking orders, do you know that?"

"Better than you," she says, because that's true. She understood that about Kendra, because Kara would follow the Admiral to hell and back if he told her to, while Lee would argue morality all the way. "Stop hogging the hooch."

He drains the flask and smacks his lips. "You've got more."

"Doesn't mean I want to share it with you."

He bumps her shoulder with his. "I know where you hide it."

She returns the bump. "You'd never steal it. You're too nice."

When she tries to bump him again, this time more forcefully, he catches her shoulder in his hand and turns her toward him. "Am not."

"Are too." She puffs air up over her cheeks to blow the hair out of her eyes. "Stealing is wrong."

Lee brushes the hair off her face and leans in until he's almost touching her, forehead to forehead. "But what if it were for the good of the fleet, Kara? What if motherless babies needed your black-market hooch? I'd have to take it then."

"Psht. The orphans can make their own hooch."

When Lee laughs, his breath tickles her nose and gets her laughing harder. When they bump heads, she jerks back, shocked from the sudden pain but unable to stop giggling.

"Ow," he says, holding his hand to his nose. "You're killing me, Thrace."

"Every day, Adama."

"I frakked her, too," he says, suddenly somber. "I frakked her and I killed her."

She's got nothing to say to that, so she puts her hand on his and leans into him, squirming under his arm until she's nestled under his chin. Nobody killed Kendra Shaw but Kendra Shaw, or maybe Admiral Cain, and Kendra isn't the only woman Lee's frakked and then frakked-over. "Let's fly tomorrow," she says. "You and me, let's get out there."

He nods and she knows he'll make it happen if he can. Maybe Lee's got things he rests on, too.


End file.
